Hello my fellow 日本語の先生,
Here's a few things I've tried already... this certainly is a challenge for me, mostly because the students only have one hour of lessons per week and they don't remember much. The students start learning hiragana from year one but unfortunately by year six they still have trouble reading one sentence. How are you guys going? I hope it's better than me!
This was an exercise worksheet for year 1's to practice recognising 1-stroke hiragana from 2-stroke hiragana. It was used in conjunction with other activities.
I laminated this sheet and used it as a matching game for year 1's. This was my first attempt at making these matching cards (after being inspired by the ones we saw on some video). I'll insert a photo of them later on (I've left them at school!). I found that A4 was too big and that the string I used was too stiff. So I have modified them so now they're a quarter of the size and use wool instead. Much better!
These are the smaller version of the matching game. The kids really love doing these. I know it's probably better for me to personally check their 'answers' and get them to say the hiragana to me once they're done, but there just isn't the time - so instead I keep an 'answers' matching card for them to check their work, or I get two students to swap with each other to check.
This is the opening theme song to Totoro - as you're probably well aware! The year 6's had been watching the movie before I arrived and I noticed that they loved this song. So I found the lyrics in Japanese and the English version & translation. We learned the chorus of the song and talked about why there is a version of the song and a translation of the song (i.e. direct translation sounds a bit spacco!)
These two web pages are from one of the sites Evan provided (thank you!) Although I didn't actually use them as dominoes... I laminated them and used them during a lesson on adjectives with the year 4's. The first page has opposite adjectives and the second has feelings adjectives. We had some matching games (the word with the picture) and also used them to make simple sentences (noun は adjective です). Students had a pile of the adjective cards in the centre of their table and were able to choose which cards they wanted to make sentences with. I plan to extend a lot more on this topic (esp. because I didn't do a lot of speaking and listening with this topic).
The following three photos are from the work I have been doing with the year 2's. They had started learning body parts and so I tried to build on what they already knew (the first two verses of Heads and Shoulders Knees and Toes!) Along with singing this song and the two worksheets, I made up 12 little laminated men (left hand picture at the bottom) with 12 little sets of body parts (right hand picture at the bottom). Students worked with a partner and had to say the hiragana word to their partner before putting it on the body outline. This was done over about 2 lessons (longer than expected!)
I wanted students to be able to find the answers on the page which is why I drew the hiragana where the body part should go. Most kids worked out how to do the sheets, but there were a few that needed quite a lot of help. I think next time I'll try to keep the list shorter and have the same vocab picture (on the right) as the words (on the left) because switching between both images was hard for some students.
I had 12 little sets of these for students to use themselves and also a larger A3 version to model with the whole class. I also coloured in the little body parts (don't worry, I wouldn't leave them in black and white! How boring that would be!) Kids thought he looked very funny by the time all the parts were on, it worked really well. I think I could also add on a few other parts, like うで、かみ、くび、むね.
Hello my fellow 日本語の先生,
Here's a few things I've tried already... this certainly is a challenge for me, mostly because the students only have one hour of lessons per week and they don't remember much. The students start learning hiragana from year one but unfortunately by year six they still have trouble reading one sentence. How are you guys going? I hope it's better than me!
This was an exercise worksheet for year 1's to practice recognising 1-stroke hiragana from 2-stroke hiragana. It was used in conjunction with other activities.
I laminated this sheet and used it as a matching game for year 1's. This was my first attempt at making these matching cards (after being inspired by the ones we saw on some video). I'll insert a photo of them later on (I've left them at school!). I found that A4 was too big and that the string I used was too stiff. So I have modified them so now they're a quarter of the size and use wool instead. Much better!
These are the smaller version of the matching game. The kids really love doing these. I know it's probably better for me to personally check their 'answers' and get them to say the hiragana to me once they're done, but there just isn't the time - so instead I keep an 'answers' matching card for them to check their work, or I get two students to swap with each other to check.
This is the opening theme song to Totoro - as you're probably well aware! The year 6's had been watching the movie before I arrived and I noticed that they loved this song. So I found the lyrics in Japanese and the English version & translation. We learned the chorus of the song and talked about why there is a version of the song and a translation of the song (i.e. direct translation sounds a bit spacco!)
These two web pages are from one of the sites Evan provided (thank you!) Although I didn't actually use them as dominoes... I laminated them and used them during a lesson on adjectives with the year 4's. The first page has opposite adjectives and the second has feelings adjectives. We had some matching games (the word with the picture) and also used them to make simple sentences (noun は adjective です). Students had a pile of the adjective cards in the centre of their table and were able to choose which cards they wanted to make sentences with. I plan to extend a lot more on this topic (esp. because I didn't do a lot of speaking and listening with this topic).
The following three photos are from the work I have been doing with the year 2's. They had started learning body parts and so I tried to build on what they already knew (the first two verses of Heads and Shoulders Knees and Toes!) Along with singing this song and the two worksheets, I made up 12 little laminated men (left hand picture at the bottom) with 12 little sets of body parts (right hand picture at the bottom). Students worked with a partner and had to say the hiragana word to their partner before putting it on the body outline. This was done over about 2 lessons (longer than expected!)
I wanted students to be able to find the answers on the page which is why I drew the hiragana where the body part should go. Most kids worked out how to do the sheets, but there were a few that needed quite a lot of help. I think next time I'll try to keep the list shorter and have the same vocab picture (on the right) as the words (on the left) because switching between both images was hard for some students.
I had 12 little sets of these for students to use themselves and also a larger A3 version to model with the whole class. I also coloured in the little body parts (don't worry, I wouldn't leave them in black and white! How boring that would be!) Kids thought he looked very funny by the time all the parts were on, it worked really well. I think I could also add on a few other parts, like うで、かみ、くび、むね.
What a funny looking man!